SEATTLE — A repeat drunk driver who plowed his pickup into a Seattle family earlier this year, killing two grandparents and badly hurting a mother and her newborn son, pleaded guilty Thursday to charges of vehicular homicide and vehicular assault.
Mark Mullan, 51, faces a recommended term of 18 years in prison when he is sentenced in King County Superior Court next month.
Mullan, a journeyman electrician with five prior drunken driving arrests, had a blood-alcohol content about three times the legal limit when he hit the family as they crossed a street in the Wedgwood neighborhood in broad daylight March 25. He was on probation from a recent case, his license was suspended, and he was supposed to have installed an ignition interlock device in his truck.
New grandparents Judy and Dennis Schulte, retired teachers from Kokomo, Ind., who had recently moved to Seattle, were killed. Their daughter-in-law, Karina Ulriksen-Schulte and her son, Elias, were injured. Ulriksen-Schulte suffered a broken pelvis and head injury, and her injuries caused a stroke that has limited her speech. But her husband, Dan Schulte, said she is walking and talking more, is almost ready to come home from a rehabilitation center, and sees their son almost every day.